iNameThatTune

February 2018

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA

Apple has purchased Shazam, a company best-known for its app that identifies ambient music and provides the user with the names of artists and song titles. It works by matching audio signals to a database of over 11 million “acoustic fingerprints.” The app was released in 2002, but since the launch of the new App Store in 2008, it has been one of the most popular products, having been downloaded more than a billion times. Shazam has also developed applications of augmented reality for advertising. As an example, a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin can be made to appear to undergo a series of makeovers when a phone with Shazam’s app is pointed at it. Industry analysts, however, tend to believe Apple is interested in the song-identifying app since Google offers a similar feature with its Pixel 2 smartphones. While details of the acquisition have not been made public, Apple is believed to have purchased Shazam for around $400 million, making the deal one of the tech giant’s larger acquisitions in recent history.